How do you make the background color of text higher than the text is?

I am making a simple menu and i have a problem. In my menu, there are several different options with a lightgrey top border. When you hover over the links i have there backgrounds turn lightgrey as well but there is still a small line above each link where they light grey background color does not cover. See the picture below:

I do not want that line to be there. I have tried using padding but to no effect.
Here is my HTML code: